Grandpa is being ridiculous. I only asked for him to make a nice visit between the Stri-Ley families and he makes a big stink about me moving out. I told him months ago that I'd be fine living alone with Dave, even though we've practically been doing it since we started playing video games over the Internet together, which turned into talking basically every night over video and pesterchum. We haven't done anything weird, and Dave doesn't push it, which is nice. The furthest we've gone is talking about relationships and coming up with bogus family situations... which is exactly none of Grandpa's business!

"Are you going to marry him?" Grandpa asks.

I feel my cheeks go hot and I angrily retort, "Why would you even—!"

"It's just that your brother John doesn't show any sign of getting married and I'd like to pass on the Harley name," Grandpa sighs.

I squint at him. "He doesn't even have our last name." John hasn't said it himself, but Rose and I have determined him to be as asexual as someone can get. Rose herself gave up years ago and is happily dating someone online. Someone not in her home state of New York, but I won't get into that because that's Rose's business. Besides, she met all of us online, so I can't judge her.

"He did once!" Grandpa shouts to the heavens. He's obviously distraught about divorcing my and John's Nanna, so I begrudgingly bring the topic back to the situation at hand.

"Are you worried because I'm moving to Texas?"

He snaps out of his despair and jerks his head back to me. I can just see his pout through his styled mustache.

I sigh and smile reassuringly. "Don't worry, Grandpa, I'll only be gone until Christmas." I try not to recognize that expression he gets when I tell him an inevitable truth.

I grab the last of my 49.5-pound suitcases and drag them to the door. Grandpa opens it for me like the gentleman he brags to be. Then he takes me to the Sea-Tac Airport. I'm going to be rooming with Dave Strider for college, and by no means did I go there just for him. He just happens to live in the area, that's all. I will agree to pay a portion of the rent and hopefully he will "keep down [his] wild apartment parties" to help me study. He apparently already got his degree during dual enrollment in high school and works for a living. He said that he'd help me find a job, too. The only work I've ever done is yard work in my greenhouse. It's going to be different, for sure.

"Bro," I say to my brother-slash-father figure. I'm trying to talk to him through his door, but he sleeps like a fricken' rock. I could probably run a chainsaw through wooden logs that have screeching alley cats in them and he wouldn't stir. "Get your ass out of bed, Jade's coming today and I can't have you in here." He insisted on "testing" the mattress we bought yesterday and hasn't come out since.

Suddenly, he opens the door and nearly knocks me out. If it weren't for my beatdown skills, I wouldn't have dodged it at all. "I guarantee you she will be late for her first day of college," he says, unusually chipper. I have surpassed him in height, but that probably means he's getting old. As far as I know, he stopped growing at twenty-five. And that makes the both of us stupidly tall. "I got so much sleep, I'm surprised I even woke up."

"Yeah, yeah, don't you have work?" I say, practically pushing him out of my apartment, which will very soon be shared with Jade, and I make my own stomach get the bad case of the rhopalocera variety sensation. We've only known each other since we were twelve and our conversations on romance tended to go a lot like this:

TG: so have you ever thought of dating
GG: sometimes! my grandpa probably wouldnt approve though
GG: but its fine! i think that hes right to tell me not to date anyone until i am out of high school
GG: im just too busy!

At that time, I would grope at the screen, running my Dorito-stained fingers down the leds whispering, "love meeee."

TG: your grandpa sounds like a standup guy
TG: hes right you know
GG: :o
TG: boys are gross
TG: we dont shower
TG: we challenge each other to dumb fights
TG: and possibly the worst strike we have against us
TG: we all wear snapbacks
GG: my grandpa doesnt wear snapbacks i dont think…?
TG: check his closet
TG: no boy would be complete without them
GG: i promise to check later. i have to do some homework first.
TG: wow youre cute

At that time, I would promptly change the subject like a typical, cliched movie trope.

GG: what?
GG: you think im cute? :D
TG: i mean like
TG: you do homework on a school night
TG: following the rules is adorable
GG: whatever you say dave!

Literally every conversation ends with me waving it off like it's not a big deal. Sure we've joked about what stupid things to name kids if we saw weird names in a videogame or what theme parks we would go to and even about what colors to paint our house. Painting. Ridiculous shit like that.

But it is a big deal.

She's going to be living with me. We're sharing an apartment.

This is going to be weird as hell.

Grandpa takes the largest of my belongings, my trunk of questionable paraphernalia, and hauls it up the single flight of stairs to Dave's apartment. I have the address memorized. I find the number. 4-13. I can't help but notice the doormat is brand new and has a pleasant "WELCOME" written across it. I wait until Grandpa arrives behind me before ringing the doorbell.

Some clanking is heard, and the door opens right after. There, a Dave Strider stands. He sure wasn't exaggerating about his height. My eyes go wide as Grandpa makes the first comment.

"My, you are stupidly tall," he mutters.

I drop my face in my hands in a double facepalm, careful not to smudge my glasses.

"Thanks, I guess," Dave says. "Sup, Jade?"

"You're supposed to say, 'good morning,' idiot!" someone shouts from the inside.

"Bro, go home!" Dave shouts behind him. "Sorry, Jade. Good morning, y'all. Can I get that trunk for you, sir?" I'm impressed by his politeness towards Grandpa. I just hope that Grandpa can just drop the overprotective dad act for once. He never let up, and every time I was on video chat with Dave, he always did something weird in the background!

Apparently, Grandpa is shocked, too. "Boy howdy," he mumbles.

I let out a sigh of relief. Then I look back at Dave and see another stupidly tall man, but not as tall as Dave, stands behind him. Dave and I look back and forth between the two gentlemen and exchange glances, which are expressions of mutual disgust. Dave scoffs and takes my trunk, barely able to lift it before I offered my help.

Eventually, everyone is inside and we're waiting on pizza for lunch. Dave and I have already broken out the video games, and it turns out we are pretty evenly matched at Mario Kart. I have already mentioned several times that I still need to unpack, since my stuff is just sitting in my room in boxes, but Dave keeps saying, "One more, one more." I can't say no to him lifting his sunglasses up and giving me puppy eyes. I'm already weak to dogs, but how did he know my weaknesses this soon?

I succumb to it every time.

"Grandpa, when does your flight leave again?" I ask over the freshly opened box of lukewarm pizza.

"Jade, when is your college tour again?" he asks, finally ahold of himself.

"Tomorrow," I answer, "At nine in the morning. I won't be by myself, you know." I glance at Dave, half a slice shoved in his mouth, giving a thumbs-up.

"Jolly good," Grandpa says ruefully. I shake off the regret on my own shoulders and take a slice. It really means a lot to him to do the "embarrassing parent at a new school" trope. "The plane leaves at eleven if you must know."

"Tell you what," Dave's "Bro" says suddenly. He's hardly spoken a sentence at a time, so this was already mildly shocking to me. "I'll drive us all to the school and then I take you to the airport and leave the lovebirds behind. Sound good?"

I promptly stuff my face at the "L" word and Dave chokes. Grandpa didn't react except thankfully.

"Brilliant!"

"Great! Sounds fun!" I swallow down the rest of my slice and retreat to my room to unpack.

"Knock, knock," I say, knocking on Jade's door after she ran off. If I know Jade, she's probably all weirded out by that awkward scene at the foldable dinner table. Sorry excuse for furniture I know, but I'm focused on the Disney movie scene I'm faced with currently.

"Come in!" she says from the other side. I open it and enter, closing the door behind me. She has her stuff all arranged in different parts of the room, everything open. The trunk is open by the bed, which is covered with a blanket and the overstuffed suitcase in between the closet and the dresser. It looks like she's been flitting between the two, putting stuff away directly, closet doors wide open and the drawers all extended outward. "I'm usually a mess, so I try to be as neat as possible when I move to new places."

"You move a lot?" I ask.

"Only a few times, but this has always been the routine."

"I've only been in one apartment, and it's right next door, so not much moving was done. But what's it like living in different places?"

She pauses to sit on the bed. "Ooh, this is comfy! Well, going into empty houses beforehand have always been my favorite part, just experiencing nothing but the space around me and imagining the possibilities. I hate the packing and unpacking parts. And leaving my brother was hard. We were thirteen, but I still can't forgive Grandpa or Nanna for it."

"Nanna's like John's mom, right? Like Grandpa is like your dad?"

"Pretty much! Adoption is weird." She lays herself down on the bed. She waves me over and I sit on it. Hot damn, this bed is comfortable. "Anyway, it's weird now because I've never moved to a place where I already knew the people there." She laughs. It is a lovely laugh. "I like it!"

"Random question," I say after laying down on the bed. We probably look like a teenage romcom right now, but I don't care.

"Random answer."

"You know those aesthetic posts on Tumblr? I usually blow them off, but for some reason, some random, incoherent reason, I feel like looking them up again." I'm heavily implying that she is making me feel this way, since we're now going to be roommates for an indeterminate amount of time.

Jade lifts herself up and leans on her elbow. "Dave, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Probably."

And just like that, the most epic pillow fort of all time was established in the land of Jade's Room.